Playing pinball machines at The Paint Pot

By Maylon Rice

Recently a large color advertisement for M.S. Rau Antiques of New Orleans, La., appeared in an issue of The New York Times, triggering in me a memory from my pinball playing past in Warren.

It featured a 1940s era Rock-Ola Bowling Game called “The King Pin.”

That was a pinball machine I once played at The Paint Pot Grocery Store in west Warren. (Photo accompanying this Pastime)

Yes, it was the same pin ball machine, a replica of a one-man bowling set, where the metal ball was sent flying from the shooter/bowler down the wooden lane into the 10-pins standing at the end of the bowling alley. The player had a toggle type switch to maneuver the shooter/bowler to aim and release the steel metal pinball down the alley to strike the preset bowling pins.


It was one heck of a pinball game.

Oh, how many hours and how many quarters I plunked into the machine on those summer afternoons long ago.

I could play for points, to get re-plays of pinball action, if and only if,  I was successful in knocking down all 10 of the pins in one or two plays – each game consisted of three-ball plays, as I recall.

The Paint Pot, was on Lincoln Street, which was off the dead end of Clio Street. Lincoln was a through street from West Pine  on the north to Sturgis on the South. The Paint Pot was a little neighborhood grocery store that, like its name, also sold paint – mostly house and furniture paint.

I had a “drummer” tell me one time that with all the wooden houses, churches and commercial buildings in Warren (aside from the presence of brick in the downtown area) “Warren was a paint seller’s dream town.”

One very unique individual, Otis Barker, presided over The Paint Pot and all that went on within its doors down on Lincoln Street.

Mr. Barker knew everyone that pushed through the double doors of the store, whether it was via the Sally Sunbeam Bread screen door protectors on the screen doors in the summer or  the solid wooden doors (always festooned with cigarette and soda pop tin sheet advertisements in the winter time). The Paint Pot, to my recollection, had plenty of floor and ceiling fans, a possibly a small air conditioner in the summer, hence the screen doors to the outside.

Otis Barker, as one leading light in Warren has said, “told the tallest tales in Warren.”

And that fits my memory of him oh so well.

He was fun to be in and around in the store, even if it was to get a Mallow Cup and a dripping wet, cold Nehi Grape soda pop and plunk your last quarter into the pin ball machine.

I always thought that Mr. Barker received more “new” pinball machines than any of the other stores in town. It seemed like he got the pinball company to always be changing out his store’s machines  - I guess it was to keep us kids playing a new machine and trying our skills on a new challenge.

Once, Mr. Barker’s store had a pinball machine of an elaborate Spanish Senorita, who hid behind a lacy fan over her face.

The more points you scored on the pinball action – the more the fan moved to reveal her strikingly beautiful face.

Another time he got a pin ball machine with an Indianapolis 500 style-race car theme. When  the pinball points where racked up on the pinball action, one of the two race cars in an outer track (away from the pinball action) zoomed around the enclosed track, with the other car in hot pursuit  If you had chosen the correct and winning car at the start of the pinball action, and if you scored enough points, you won a free game on the machine. Notification of the points being accumulated for the free game came with a loud “thwack” sound made as your free play reward notification appeared on the pinball background screen.

And there were other machines that came to the store over the short few years I was a bike riding kid on the brick streets of downtown.

There were always two pin ball machines at the Paint Pot – sort of side-by-side in the small alcove at the front of the store – farther away from the door and to the side of the one or two lanes where the cashier function of the grocery/paint store took place.

Mr. Barker tolerated us kids playing those pinball machines. No rough housing, no horsing around and no “smutty or dirty talking” was permitted.

Mr. Barker could and would run you out of the store in violation of those rules.

Pinball games were also at other places in Warren. There was Wayne’s, the Corral, Rod’s Pool Hall, the snack bar at the Warren Drive In,  and even at the old Hill  Top Café out on the Monticello Highway. And there were, I am sure others.

The King Pin, that Rock-Ola Bowling Game, according to the M.S. Rau Antiques, advertisement in the tony New York Times, was among the most popular rare vintage arcade games every produced.

Playing the unique machines at The Paint Pot and all over Warren on those slow summer afternoons while out riding bikes – well, that’s a Pastime worth remembering.